Monday, March 23, 2015

How Obama outmaneuvered hardliners and cut a Cuba deal

WASHINGTON/MIAMIMon Mar 23, 2015 1:06am EDT
(Reuters) - The
December breakthrough that upended a half-century of U.S.-Cuba enmity
has been portrayed as the fruit of 18 months of secret diplomacy.

But Reuters interviews
with more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the process
reveal a longer, painstakingly cautious quest by U.S. President Barack Obama and veteran Cuba specialists to forge the historic rapprochement.

As
now-overt U.S.-Cuban negotiations continue this month, Reuters also has
uncovered new details of how talks began and how they stalled in late
2013 during secret sessions in Canada. Senior administration officials
and others also revealed how both countries sidelined their foreign
policy bureaucracies and how Obama sought the Vatican’s blessing to
pacify opponents.

Obama's
opening to Havana could help restore Washington's influence in Latin
America and give him a much-needed foreign policy success.

But
the stop-and-start way the outreach unfolded, with deep mistrust on
both sides, illustrates the obstacles Washington and Havana face to
achieving a lasting detente.

Obama was not the first Democratic president to reach out to Cuba,
but his attempt took advantage of - and carefully judged - a
generational shift among Cuban-Americans that greatly reduced the
political risks.

In a May 2008 speech to the conservative Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami, Obama set out a new policy allowing greater travel and remittances to Cuba for Cuban-Americans, though he added he would keep the embargo in place as leverage.

“Obama
understood that the policy changes he was proposing in 2008 were
popular in the Cuban-American community so he was not taking a real
electoral risk,” said Dan Restrepo, then Obama’s top Latin America
adviser.

Six months later,
Obama was validated by an unexpectedly high 35 percent of the
Cuban-American vote, and in 2012 he won 48 percent - a record for a
Democrat.

With his final election over, Obama instructed aides in December 2012 to make Cuba a
priority and "see how far we could push the envelope," recalled Ben
Rhodes, a Deputy National Security Advisor who has played a central role
in shaping Cuba policy.

Helping
pave the way was an early 2013 visit to Miami by Obama's top Latin
American adviser Ricardo Zuniga. As a young specialist at the State
Department he had contributed to a 2001 National Intelligence Estimate
that, according to another former senior official who worked on it,
marked the first such internal assessment that the economic embargo of Cuba had failed.

He
met a representative of the anti-Castro Cuban American National
Foundation, and young Cuban-Americans who, according to one person
present, helped confirm the waning influence of older Cuban exiles who
have traditionally supported the half-century-old embargo.

But
the White House wasn't certain. "I don’t think we ever reached a point
where we thought we wouldn’t have to worry about the reaction in Miami,"
a senior U.S. official said.

The
White House quietly proposed back-channel talks to the Cubans in April
2013, after getting notice that Havana would be receptive, senior U.S.
officials said.

Obama at
first froze out the State Department in part due to concern that "vested
interests" there were bent on perpetuating a confrontational approach,
said a former senior U.S. official. Secretary of State John Kerry was
informed of the talks only after it appeared they might be fruitful,
officials said.

Cuban
President Raul Castro operated secretly too. Josefina Vidal, head of
U.S. affairs at Cuba's foreign ministry, was cut out, two Americans
close to the process said. Vidal could not be reached for comment.

The
meetings began in June 2013 with familiar Cuban harangues about the
embargo and other perceived wrongs. Rhodes used his relative youth to
volley back.

"Part of the
point was 'Look I wasn’t even born when this policy was put in place …
We want to hear and talk about the future'," said Rhodes, 37.

The U.S. government had sent Gross, a USAID contractor, on risky missions to deliver communications equipment to Cuba's Jewish community. His December 2009 arrest put Obama's planned "new beginning" with Cuba on hold.

The
secret talks were almost derailed by Havana's steadfast demand that
Obama swap the "Cuban Three," a cell of Cuban spies convicted in Miami
but considered heroes in Havana, for Gross.

Obama refused a straight trade because Washington denied Gross was a spy and the covert diplomacy stalled as 2013 ended.

Even
as Obama and Castro shook hands at the Johannesburg memorial service
for South African leader Nelson Mandela, the situation behind the scenes
did not look very hopeful.

"The Cubans were dug in … And we did kind of get stuck on this," Rhodes said.Rhodes and Zuniga spent more than 70 hours negotiating with the Cubans, mostly at Canadian government facilities in Ottawa.

By
late spring 2014, Gross’ friends and family grew alarmed over his
physical and psychological state. The White House and the Cubans knew
that if he died in prison, repairing relations would be left to another
generation.

With Gross’
mother, Evelyn, dying of lung cancer, the U.S. government and his legal
team launched an effort to convince the Cubans to grant him a furlough
to see her.

That bid failed, despite an offer by Gross's lawyer Scott Gilbert to sit in his jail cell as collateral.

But a turning point had occurred at a January 2014 meeting in Toronto. The Americans proposed - to the Cubans' surprise - throwing Rolando Sarraff, a spy for Washington imprisoned in Cuba since 1995, into the deal, U.S. participants said.

The White House could claim it was a true "spy swap," giving it political cover. But it took 11 more months to seal the deal.

Castro
did not immediately agree to give up Sarraff, a cryptographer who
Washington says helped it disrupt Cuban spy rings in the United States.

And
Obama, stung by the outcry over his May 2014 exchange of five Taliban
detainees for U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, was wary of another
trade perceived as lopsided, according to people close to the situation.

He
weighed other options, including having the Cubans plead guilty to the
charges against them and be sentenced to time served, according to the
people.

Gilbert worked
with the Obama administration, but urged it to move faster. From his
vantage point, the turning point came in April 2014, when it became
clear key Obama officials would support a full commutation of the Cuban
prisoners' sentences.

JG: What Obama did was a plus, but there are still roadblocks that must be removed.

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